Novus Blog

Jun26

Novus Intern Spotlight Series: January Frederickson

Posted 2 years 237 days ago |

Novus Intern Spotlight Series: January Frederickson

Meet January Frederickson, one of the physiology interns at Novus headquarters in St. Charles, MO this summer. She’s working in the Novus labs on a project for determining starch content in animal feed and grain. January works seven days a week—five at Novus and two on the weekends in retail. Currently living in St. Clair, MO, January commutes about two and a half hours in total each weekday through curvy country back roads in addition to highways in order to get to and from her internship each day. The long drive she makes is telling of the drive she has in life for pursuing her career goals in science. She graduated with an associate’s degree in applied science in biotechnology from East Central College in Union, MO.

“My tenacity and my ambition” is what January told us she values most in herself during a short interview. “I will go at something doggedly and work very hard at it. I also have very high hopes for myself and try to live up to those expectations and work to the standard I’ve set.”

She continues, “Getting my associate’s degree in applied science and technology would be my greatest accomplishment. Whenever I was first coming out of high school, I was very unsure of what I wanted to do, I was going to go for culinary arts, and I found that I didn’t care for it, so I went back into the workforce. Seven years later, a non-traditional student, I had to work my way up from the very bottom of almost all of my courses. So struggling with the mathematical side and some of the more intense chemistry was a challenge, but I overcame it.”